Sunday 25 May 2014 – Lhasa - Text

We arrived yesterday about 6pm after 1350km on bikes from Kathmandu, to Everest Base Camp and on to Lhasa, the forbidden City. It was a very long hard ride, with many stops, speed checks, passport checks, etc etc.

There are some odd things in Tibet, for example, whenever we needed to fill the bikes with Petrol, we all had to line up about 5 meters from the bowser, turn the engines off and manually push each bike to the bowser, fill and then push away again.

The beds are all rock hard, fortunately for me I like a hard bed and I have found them good, but if you like  a soft bed, Tibet is not for you.

The scenery has been spectacular, the roads, whilst better than Nepal, leave a little to be disired. Then again, it is an extremely harsh environment.

Don’t be a stray dog in Tibet, yesterday, at some small town, whilst we were having Lunch, the army guys come along with iron bars and beat to death every dog in the street where we were having lunch. Some of the other people in the group were just sitting outside when this happened. I suppose its just another subliminal message to the locals, Don’t mess with us.

Lhasa has obviously grown enormously in the last few years, very heavily into construction and light engineering. Earthmoving and tractors (all new) lined the streets in their thousands as we rode in.

However, the old part of Lhasa where we are staying seems nice, the place is clean and virtually no pollution (unlike Kathmandu, which is also in  valley surrounded by hills).

This morning we visited the Potala Palace (and no I did not climb the 350 steps needed to enter the palace, I would not do this at sea level, let alone at 3600 mtrs) and later we went to the Barkoura and Jokhang Temple, which I really enjoyed, many faces and peoples coming to prostrate themselves.

Lots of people wanted to have their photo taken with me, size matters and I was a an oddity here. I should have charged a fee.

Tomorrow, we go to the Sera Monastry  to see the debating monks, should be fun.